So, I’d found out like this.
A face had looked cautiously round the door. It was strangely familiar.
‘Yes?’ I enquired.
‘I’m Aaron – your intern?’ he said.
‘Is it that you aren’t sure whether you are my intern?’ I asked. ‘Or are you speaking Millennial?’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I’m just speaking like I usually do?’
‘So you are. Shouldn’t you be at Colindale, sifting through newspapers? That is a question.’
‘I’ve been there for two days. I hoped I could come back now. I’d like to learn about publishing?’
‘No shit?’
‘Yes. Really.’
Excellent. I could still impose on him then.
‘First tell me what you’ve discovered so far about Walter Sly’s death,’ I said. ‘Then I might let you have full and unrestricted access to the fabled slush pile.’
He opened the notebook that he had been clutching.
‘I tried to go back to the very beginning,’ he said. ‘I’ve constructed a timeline.’
‘Am I paying you to construct timelines?’ I asked.
‘You’re not paying me at all.’
‘You’re an intern,’ I said.
‘My father said to point out to you that you were exploiting me,’ he said.
‘And so you have,’ I said kindly. ‘I’m sure he would be proud of you. At least be grateful you’re not a writer. You will earn proper money one day.’
‘Sometimes I think I’d like to be a writer.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Don’t they enjoy writing?’
‘Writers enjoy starting and finishing books. In between there is nothing but doubt, self-loathing and coffee. Their moments of happiness are brief and illusionary. So, just tell me what you’ve found out.’
‘OK. As you know, work started on the Priory garden in the spring of 1959. Then in early May the workforce was dismissed and Mr Munnings and the gardener continued on their own.’
‘Yes, I do know. Look, you may have another eighty years to live, but I don’t. Can we fast-forward a bit? Like when you’re streaming a video.’
‘Do you know how to stream a video?’
‘Yes.’
‘A lot of older people don’t.’
We stared at each other across a generational divide. ‘I can do long division,’ I said. ‘And I’ve never paid more than two pounds fifty for a cappuccino.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘So, in late May, the gardener vanished and was found in the well after three days. The trial took place in August. The verdict was not guilty. Then, in early September, Mr Munnings died suddenly of a heart attack.’
I nodded. ‘So, when did his wife die? During the trial?’
‘Some time after that.’
‘How much after?’
‘Nobody knows. Mr Munnings’ son and daughter-in-law discovered his body, when he didn’t answer the phone. They lived close by. They also discovered his wife was missing. At first the police thought she might have killed her husband and fled. There was a search for her – they checked whether she might have gone to her family or London or even left the country. But then the coroner reported that it was a heart attack that killed Munnings and the police decided that, since she had dementia, Mrs Munnings had just wandered off, once there was nobody watching her.’
‘Dementia? That was what was wrong with her?’
‘Yes. I didn’t research dementia because I thought you’d already know more about it than I did. Older people often look that sort of thing up, just in case.’
‘I’m younger than a lot of my writers.’
‘You mean the dead ones? The ones whose estates you represent?’
‘They’re a lot less trouble than the living ones. What happened next, Aaron?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘they continued looking for the grandmother, but this time in the fields and woods round West Wittering.’
‘And that’s where they found her?’
‘No. It wasn’t until January 1960 that her body was found – up on the Downs, in a small area of woodland, just north of Chichester. It seems she had just wandered off on her own and that was as far as she could get. She’d died of exposure or hunger or something. By that stage it was difficult to tell. She must have just tramped across the fields, maybe for days. It’s a bit sad, really. She stopped just short of a lane where somebody might have found her while she was still alive, but it took ages to locate her body. It was in the middle of a wood, under some bracken she’d managed to cover herself with. They identified the body mainly by her clothes and shoes, which matched what she had been wearing, and by the contents of her handbag.’
‘Well done,’ I said. ‘Not leprosy then, in either case.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Just thinking out loud. It’s what old people do.’
‘Cool. Can I do some publishing work now?’ he asked.
I looked at him. Could he be turned into an agent one day? Who could say? In the meantime, he was far better off being exploited by me than being released back into the community to write a novel. I was being cruel to be kind, though thinking about it, I was also being cruel to be cruel. That’s how you get when your dementia stops you streaming videos.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ll forward you a couple of manuscripts from the slush pile. Don’t worry – it’s all electronic. I don’t accept paper submissions any more. Even at my age.’
His face brightened up. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘My pleasure,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it now.’
I selected a couple at random from a folder marked ‘The Usual Old Crap’ and pinged them across. By tomorrow he’d be begging to go back to the archives in Colindale.
I picked up my phone and texted Ethelred with what seemed to me to be the one useful fact that we had uncovered.
RE OLD MAN MUNNINGS, I wrote. HE DIED SUDDENLY OF A HEART ATTACK.